Other Greek writings of the New Testament era, including papyri and inscriptions

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Please quote the Greek text you are discussing directly in your post if it is reasonably short - do not ask people to look it up. This is not a beginner's forum, competence in Greek is assumed.

Some time ago Mark Lightman proposed the GRONT index. This is "Greek Readings Outside the New Testament". Works can be given a GRONT score (very subjective). For fun I created a page that shows GRONT scores for different works and allows users to provide scores and add new works.

This may be interesting for those trying to find other material for students (or themselves) to read:

This year I use "The Greek New Testament for Beginning Readers"
that gives the Byzantine Textform by Maurice A Robinson & William G. Pierpont
with the Lexical Information & Layout by John Jeffrey Dodson
publish by VTR publications 2010
ISBN 978-3-941750-24-1

the advantage of this book is that has verb parsing by Maurice A Robinson & William G. Pierpont
as the first level of the footnotes

and Lexical Information complied by John Jeffrey Dodson
as the second level of footnotes.

All footnotes are located at the end of the page
makes it very easy for a student to move with the text.
34.95 from Amazon today

All of these material are in the PUBLIC domain.

My students are very comfortable using this text, and I would strongly suggest it,
It is a hardcover book, and its price

Nikolaos Adamou wrote:This year I use "The Greek New Testament for Beginning Readers"
that gives the Byzantine Textform by Maurice A Robinson & William G. Pierpont
with the Lexical Information & Layout by John Jeffrey Dodson
publish by VTR publications 2010
ISBN 978-3-941750-24-1

Has anyone tried giving students some Aesop's fables?
I know the Freeman & Lowe A Greek Reader for Schools introduces a few fables at the beginning of their book.
They are available on line as well at http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/perry/index.htm
Cheers,
John Barach

I used Freeman & Lowe a couple of years ago with a student that I knew would not be going on with her Greek after graduation. Initially enthusiastic about the text, I quickly lost the honeymoon glow:

1) The texts are edited to make them easier for the advanced beginning or intermediate students. That's ok, but I prefer it uncut with extra notes and help, so that at all times the student is seeing real, not editorial Greek.

2) I found at least one outright mistake in the book.

3) A couple of times the editing did not simplify the text, but made it practically impossible to understand what was being said. I had to go to an unedited version to make sense out of it. While I had fun showing the student the original text and comparing it with the edited, it's pedagogically preferable not to have to do so!

Having said that, I recently used a couple of the adapted fables for sight reading practice for my beginning class, which is about 2/3ds of the way through their beginning text (Crosby & Schaeffer). It is now one of several texts that I use for supplemental reading practice, but I would never again rely on it as a principal text for learning better Greek.

cwconrad wrote:I should let Louis answer this one: the #1 answer is, I think, Epictetus. Louis has a site devoted to resources for reading and studying the Enchiridion or "Manual" of Epictetus, a selection from the Stoic teacher's street lectures delivered in Rome as recorded by the historian Appian. Parts of Marcus Aurelius Meditations are also well worth reading, in my opinion. I think some here, Φωσφορος, for instance, have been reading the contemporary Greek novelists ("romances"): Chariton and the like. I've sometimes recommended the Pseudo-Lucian ΟΝΟΣ ("The Ass") which was the inspiration for Apuleius' great Latin novel, "The Golden Ass."

I would use a number of texts. Epictetus is certainly one. But I would also suggest Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo; Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum 1); Cebes Tabula, some of Epicurus Kyiae doxai, etc. After a while I would add some non-literary papyri, with notes to clarify they strange orthography.

One might also read some of the pseudepigraphic Jewish texts, like Aristobulus.

Ed Krentz

Edgar Krentz
Prof. Emeritus of NT
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Yes, Aristobulus is only available in fragments, i.e. citations in later authors. This is true of many ancient Greek and Lartin authors. The best collection of them in Greek is Albert-Marie Denis, FRAGMENTA PSEUDEPIGRAPHICORUM QUAE SUPERSUNT GRAECA. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970.

Aristobulus is included among lost Jewish historians who wrote in Greek. He describes Moses as "divine man", who did wonderful things in Egypt, e.g. taugrht the Egyptians how to write in hieroglyphics, divided Egypt into nomes [administrative units], etc. I count him as a writer who is essentially non-biblical, though he writes about a biblical figure, Moses.

In similar fashion, I regard the ancient text "Joseph and Asenath" as a non biblical text, though Jewish, even though Joseph is a biblical figrure.

Such texts are essentially written in "Koine" Greek. The wonderful Epistola ad Philokrates", which describes the origins of the LXX, would give seminary students difficulties because of it vocabulary. I am currently reading Josephus "Against Apion" with interested students, his apologetic defense of Judaism. It is in a more literary Greek [much us of the optative], though not at Artticistic text.

Ed Krentz

Edgar Krentz
Prof. Emeritus of NT
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago